


The key to The Doctor

by Pearlislove



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Imagaining what 12 and Bill will be like, The Doctor has a picture of Susan on his desk, soon to be au probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-06
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-10-15 09:56:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10554370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pearlislove/pseuds/Pearlislove
Summary: A little imagaining what Bill and 12 will be like before the Season 10 premier.Inspiered by the picture of Susan Foreman on The Doctor's desk in the clip from the new season.





	

 

They sit in companionable silence. They’ve been silent for a while, idle chit-chatting quickly dying out, mostly due to ‘The Doctor’ being quite unresponsive. Every time she tried to ask a question with real substance, he acted avoidant, and every time she tried to ask a random question about nothing, his frown deepened. The Doctor didn’t seem more willing to small talk than Bill was to keep attempting it with the same result, and they’d fallen quite.

 

Bill glanced around the desk, a bit restless. It was cluttered, filled with books and papers and gizmos she couldn’t for the life or her figure out if they had a practical use. Jammed between what looked like a crystal ball and a jar with two Ostrich feather pens, was a framed photo.

 

The photo, dressed in a thick wooden frame, caught Bill’s attention. It was a black and white portrait of a teenage girl, probably not more than fifteen or sixteen, with short dark hair and an old leather hat on her head. The girl was staring definitely into the camera, lips thin and black eyes glaring at the photographer in a perfect imitation of a serious adult.  

 

“Who is she?” Bill asked suddenly, pointing to the photo. There was something in the girl's gaze that sent chills down her spine, and she wondered who this serious little girl had been.

 

The Doctor, upon hearing her inquiry,  looked startled. Sitting up straighter in his chair, he blinked as though he just woke up. “Who is who?” He mumbled, sounding slightly irritated to be forced to leave his quiet thoughts behind.

 

“The girl in the photo.” Bill pointed to it, again, exaggerating her motions in order to make him understand, and this time it seems to get through.

 

“Oh.” He says, blinking once more in surprise, the tiniest hint of a smile creeping onto his sullen old face. “Well that's my granddaughter. The finest woman Earth had ever seen.”There’s pride in his voice, now, and his smile is growing, the happiness of a thousand good memories leaking into his expression.

 

On a subconscious level, Bill could almost tell that they were related. Though The Doctor is blue eyed, and the girl most certainly is dark eyed, there is something strikingly similar in their expression, the intense gaze penetrating your every defense and stealing the deepest and darkest secrets from your mind.

 

Bill smile, resisting an impulse to giggle at The Doctors suddenly happy expression. “Bet she’s amazing.” She says, smiling herself as she continued to indulge The Doctor. “What’s her name?” She ask more, wanting to hold on to the fleeting sliver of happiness The Doctor was showing.

 

At this, however, The Doctor flinch. His body reacts before his mind and his body twitch, sudden pain clouding his eyes as he not so subtly glanced at the photo.

 

Bill’s smile died on her lips, sudden worry growing inside her at his contradicting reaction. “What? Did I say something wrong?” She try to keep her anxiety out of her voice but she can tell she shouldn’t have asked, though she didn’t quite understand why.

 

The Doctor doesn’t respond. He sits there, quiet and with the deepest of frowns on his face. Finally when the tension is thick enough to cut with a knife, he lets out a mighty sigh. “She **_was._ ** ” He stress the past tense, and something akin to understanding start to dawn upon Bill. “She **_was_ ** named Susan Foreman.” He finish it with another might sigh, eyes filled to the brim with pain, as if saying her name physically force the air out of his lungs and made his heart ache. Finally, Bill understand.

 

She _was_. His Granddaughter, in the picture still so young, was dead, perhaps from a horrible accident, perhaps from pure unluck. Life was rarely fair and it seemed this man had learnt it in the worst of ways. Though his memories of his beloved granddaughter filled him with happiness and love, there was also pain and grief from her death.

 

“I’m sorry.” She says, almost automatically, looking at his pained face and trying to will the expression sway from his features. She wanted the happy Doctor back, longed to see the man smiling at memory of his granddaughter return. Somehow she had a feeling that that Doctor wasn’t coming back.

 

No one on campus had ever seen him smile, and according to rumours he couldn’t. She heard about him often enough in the cafeteria, heard people discussing him and his sullen face amongst themselves. They were always saying the same thing, though, and today they’d been proven both right and wrong.

 

They said he couldn’t smile, and Bill knew that was wrong. For a moment, thinking of his granddaughter he had once loved, The Doctor smiled. He could, and he would, if you just catched him at the right moment.

 

But most of the time he chose not to. It could be for any number of reasons, partly because some people simply were that way, but with what Bill had learned she believed it was something else. She believed that it was a shield he had put up to keep out hurt and grief of which he already have too much.

 

Bill wanted to get to know The Doctor, wanted to work her way down in under that shield of his until she could see who he really was.

 

\------

 

It’s eons later. The talk in The Doctor’s crowded office feels like a vague dream, now, and had The Doctor not been sitting in a chair a few meters in front of her, Bill would have thought it a dream.

 

The Doctor is nervous, though, and when back then the quite had been comfortable, now it was worrying. The Doctor was sitting and staring at his hands, twisting the ring on his finger and twitching, and Bill feared more than anything that something was seriously  wrong.

 

He needed a distraction, she finally  figured. Something to occupy his tired mind and stop his thought from drifting back to that nasty woman they’d encountered - Missy, The Doctor called her. Apparently an old, entirely unwelcome friend turned enemy. She had taunted them and tried to kill them and while Bill shuddered at the mere memory, she didn’t dare imagine the discomfort of The Doctor, who knew her and had been attacked by her before.

 

As The Doctor started drumming out a four beat rhythm on his knee, Bill tried desperately to find something to say. Something that could help occupy The Doctor's thoughts and keep them away from the pain and grief their last encounter had caused. Slowly, her thoughts drifted back to their first meeting and The Doctor’s picture of his granddaughter. It gave her an idea.

 

Smiling more than she should, Bill finally spoke once more. “Can you tell me about her? About Susan?” She speaks as though she’s continuing a conversation they never finished , and in a way, she is.

 

The Doctor look down at her from his chair, as confused as the first time she asked who the girl in the picture was. “Who are you talking about?” He asks, sceptical, as if though the question itself could prove to be traitorous.

 

“Susan, your granddaughter. Tell me about her. You said she was the best woman on Earth, but how come?” She explains, gleefully smiling as she saw her distraction working.

 

The Doctor, whether he realised it was a distraction or not, smiled. “Oh, that she was. You see, we had just left our own home planet when..”

 

The Doctor continued to talk, but Bill is only listening with half an ear. She is watching The Doctor, excited and happy as he talked and made exaggerated motions that mimicked some she’d seen photos of a younger man with a bowtie doing.

 

Bill had wanted to get under his shield, to get to the core of him and see who he really was. Now, so many lifetimes later, she’d gotten the chance. Smiling happily, she leaned back against the console and listened, silently thanking the girl, wherever she might be.

 

Because as it turned out, Susan Foreman was they key to a lot of things, and Bill Potts intended to use the key to unlock all the locks that it could unlock.

 


End file.
